Eton’s new fees

[IWantedThereThereButItsGone]

Heavens …

Eton College will pass on full cost of 20% VAT to parents

https://www.thetimes.com/article/3fbec730-288c-4a14-b91e-a042c94c7ca1?shareToken=3cff257bc445f9764343feeac522241c

It’s good that current bursary recipients won’t be financially affected (and how I empathise with those parents who must have been worried) but I wonder what the effect will be going forward. The new fees are staggering - perhaps it will change the tenor of the school?

@FloofPaws - you clearly do not understand how people like @WS2009 think. They are not going to pay it, whether they can afford it or not. They are going to take the best state places.
If you are of a certain thinking, you follow that thought process all the way through. By your birth you know what you are entitled to and you know how to game the system. So you will now game the system, to your advantage.

If an Eton education cost £150k 10 odd years ago and now costs £315-350k and rising, you will not pay for it. You know your kids are clever, you know you now have to buy them an advantage in a different way. The game has changed.

@Araminta1003 not necessarily- it’s just that I believe in redistribution (to a point). I’m privileged to be able to pay. What makes me angry is those who can also pay, even more, many times more than me, and find a way out.

@GoingRoundInOvals

There is such thing as state boarding! My dc state boarded

Just because they have £500M in reserves doesn’t mean they have deep pockets. Those reserves are probably made up of land and property the school uses, and not cash. So you can’t treat it and regard it as cash. If they sell it off there will be no school left and so they’ve said they’re not gonna do that, if you want the service you have to pay.

Operationally they say, and I believe them, there isn’t much profit on day to day activities so prices have to rise to cover additional costs. In this case VAT.

We don’t all believe in redistribution.

You're not entitled to impose your view on the rest of us.

The best you’ve got is your vote. Then in theory if enough people think like you do you get your democratic wishes, though this doesn’t really happen in practice.

but if those kids are from care, council estates, poorer areas then there would be some levelling up.

yeah but, yeah but…….they might catch ‘posh’. Then what?

Exactly. That’s what’s happened here. I wasn’t a big fan of the VAT in the election campaign, partly because I’ll have to pay it and partly because it may not be effective. And I appreciate not everyone agrees, life’s not like that. But weighing it all up, I think it’s more positive than negative, and I voted for Labour having thought that through.

@Farting - I thought the reserves were the multi multi million pound endowment (into the hundreds of millions), upon which they pay no tax, being a charity, which has grown exponentially over the last 15 years. Whilst school fees have more than doubled now.
All I am saying is that the Etonians I know from Cambridge and from work are solid middle class who now work hard as professionals. Their DCs won’t be going to Eton, they can’t afford it.

@MotherOfCatBoy - but how can you possibly avoid paying tax if you are an employee on PAYE? It is just is not possible. The only thing you can do is bump up your pension and fill your ISA. That is about it?

Honestly, if Eton want a school for all clever boys then fees should be payable on a sliding scale of income (passive and active accumulated) and depending on how many kids each family has. That would allow the whole range of society to participate in a fairer way. And they should ask everyone for full disclosure.

Most Eton full fee paying UK resident parents will have paid very large sums of tax in order to generate enough money for the Eton fees. The level will make them likely significant net contributors to the government coffers. They’ll be funding numerous state school places that they are not availing themselves of. Why is there this constant rhetoric from posters like you of tax them more, punish them for being rich? Why not say “good for them” (and whisper it, even “thank you” for all the money you’ve put in and not taken out) and scroll on by?

By being paid in ways other than PAYE. So the self employed or those dealing in capital/ property will have different tax reliefs or be taxed on capital gains, not PAYE. Also those paid in shares may reap dividends which are taxed lower than standard income tax, and when the shares are sold are subject to capital gains tax, with allowances that can be pulled forward from prior years. Think of those with property or share portfolios, inheritances in trust or bankers with share bonuses.
I agree, on PAYE it is hard to do anything other than pay up (have always been PAYE myself).

@MotherOfCatBoy - ok but I was talking about the Henrys on PAYE and frankly, I think Eton need them too.
Someone told me Dulwich College is only upping 10-11 per cent - do they value their parent group more?

@WS2009 - wow 🤣🙄

🎻

Totally agree @ItIsSoVeryComplicated

Vivienne counts: “1,2,3 …many.”